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We all know that huge benefits come with getting your kids outdoors. Being outside provides an outlet for limitless energy and feeds ravenous curiosity, and studies have shown it may even improve performance in school. Yet, children today spend only half as much time in unstructured outdoor activity as their parents did when they were growing up. Getting outside can be a fun-filled way to inject learning and healthy activity into a child’s life, two things that our new partner,Sesame Street, is always eager to encourage.

If you’re looking for a sunny spot to visit, why not pack up the car and head to a national park where just-for-kids programs abound. Whether it is a day trip, an overnight or a week-long camp out, young explorers will find ample opportunities for adventure in America’s national parks. They can watch bears, deer, and hawks amid sequoias in the Sierras; learn the basic camping skills needed to spend a night outdoors under the stars; or explore centuries-old stone and log dwellings to discover how our ancestors lived – all the while nurturing a love for nature and history that will stay with them always.

For even more inspiration about the fun to be had in national parks, watch and see what Elmo, Murray and the Sesame Street gang discover when they teamed up with the National Park Foundation and the National Park Service to explore the parks. Watch and see how your kids can share the same experiences.

Sesame Workshop, the non-profit behind numerous iconic educational children’s shows in the United States and around the world, is excited to announce the launch of Season 44 of Sesame Street. This season is full of fun new additions to the neighborhood. Armando, played by Ismael Cruz Córdova, joins the cast and beloved Cookie Monster hosts a new segment: Crumby Pictures Presents.

The focus of Crumby Pictures Presents is our self-regulation curriculum. Self-regulation is a set of critical skills for preschoolers that affects children socially, behaviorally, and academically. Unfortunately, children often begin kindergarten without important skills such as being able to follow directions, stay on task with focused attention, and regulate their own emotions using concrete strategies. Kindergarten teachers report that over half of their students start school lacking good self-regulation abilities even though they are seen by many as being more essential for school readiness than academic skills such as counting or recognizing letters.

Fortunately, self-regulation skills can be taught during the preschool years and development of these skills happens rapidly. These skills and strategies are at the center of every laugh and lesson learned in Crumby Pictures Present.

To learn more about Season 44 and all the laughs Cookie Monster, Armando, and the whole gang have in store, click here.

Tomoko Nagano is Senior Editor, International Book Publishing at Sesame Workshop. She was also previously an editor with Sesame Street Magazine.

Achieving “Big in Japan” status is an honor for select cultural icons. Sesame Street is one of them. Japanese audiences of all ages have embraced the characters for generations, so the brand is familiar to young and old, just as it is in the United States. It is also well-known because of longstanding English language learning materials, and the broadcast itself is an unintentional and unconventional way many in Japan learn English. Today, Sesame Street fans are fashionable young adults who grew up watching as children. Aiming at this audience, Japanese publisher Takarajima launched its second Sesame Street Mook (the name is a combination of “magazine” and “book”) title on July 19, 2013. Read More

Jessie Renee Hopkins is a Senior Writer and Game Designer in Sesame Workshop’s Department of Content Production. Dave Glauber is a Writer and Interactive Designer in Sesame Workshop’s Content Innovation Lab.

When my colleague, Dave Glauber, and I were asked to co-lead a workshop on Narrative Design at this year’s Interaction Design and Children (IDC) conference, we had no idea it would culminate with a giant cat face. As it turned out, we couldn’t have been happier that it did.

The IDC conference’s mission is to bring together designers, researchers, and educators to explore ways of creating better interactive learning experiences for children. Our goal for the workshop was to guide conference participants through adding a story to exhibits at the New York Hall of Science. We wanted find out if narrative elements would influence visitors, kids especially, to spend more time with the exhibits. The hope was, if we could do a better job of drawing kids in, we could do a better job of helping kids learn. Read More

Every good neighborhood has a gathering place. For 44 years, that gathering place on Sesame Street has been Hooper’s Store.

The show’s creators wanted the set of Sesame Street to differ from other kids’ shows on television at the time. Rather than stage the show in a clubhouse or other fantasy setting, the show’s action would take place on a realistic urban street. Inspiration for the set came from the neighborhoods around New York City – complete with brownstones, a subway stop and a corner store. The first season welcomed viewers into the apartments of Bert and Ernie and Susan and Gordon. Neighbors met up on the stoop of 123 Sesame and the central gathering place for the neighborhood was Hooper’s Store. Read More

Anita Stewart is the Senior Vice President of Global Strategic Partnerships and Development here at Sesame Workshop.

Natural disasters affect children and families all over the world. When they happen, they are inevitably difficult and confusing, especially for young children. For years, Sesame Workshop has developed materials for young children in their families centered around emergency preparedness for this exact reason. We can’t predict when a disaster will strike, but if children know what to do and families have a plan, the fears from being caught off-guard can be mitigated.

Children everywhere are affected by emergencies. Take, for example, the over 100 million children under the age of seven in China. That’s more than the entire population of Canada, Chile, and Spain — grown-ups included! — combined. Emergency preparedness is just as important for them as it is for children anywhere else, and to fulfill our philanthropic mission, the team here at Sesame needs to find ways to help them. Read More

The Publishing Group's Karen Halpenny reads to children at the New York Public Library.

Ariel Birdoff has been a member of the Sesame Workshop Publishing Group for more than eight years.

As part of Sesame’s Count Me In volunteer program, the Workshop’s Publishing Group is spending two Friday mornings a month in the company of preschoolers, caregivers, and librarians at the nearby Riverside Branch of the New York Public Library, just up the block! As lovers of books and champions of children’s literacy, we wanted to find a way to spend some of our volunteer hours working with both books and children. We were very lucky to find children’s librarian Rachel Evans and her beautiful children’s room so close by. To be able to help out in our own neighborhood feels extra special! Read More

The 2.7 million children in the United States with an incarcerated parent are in a uniquely difficult situation. They feel a number of complex emotions: sadness, shame, guilty, anger. Yet they often don’t feel they are allowed to talk about their experience, partly because the adults in their life oftentimes don’t know how to talk about the experience either. That’s why Sesame Workshop launched Little Children, Big Challenges: Incarceration, a multimedia, bi-lingual (English/Spanish) outreach initiative with stories featuring Sesame Street’s beloved characters that help children feel reassured, loved and supported. Read More

Courtney Wong is a research specialist for Sesame Workshop’s Department of Education and Research.

Sesame Street content has been exploding on the digital market with new apps and website games for your preschoolers! With the ever-expanding digital landscape of design and technology possibilities, we must keep learning and adapting our work. Handheld touch devices and apps did not even exist when we were kids, so we need all the help we can get! Read More

The number of children with an incarcerated parent has increased nearly 80% in the past 20 years. Nearly 2.7 million children have a parent in state or federal prison, yet few resources exist to support young children and families coping with this life-changing circumstance. Children need tools to express emotions, while their caregivers need help maintaining routines and establishing age-appropriate communication around incarceration. That’s why Sesame Workshop has created Little Children, Big Challenges: Incarceration, a new outreach initiative.

This bilingual, multimedia initiative includes material that can help young children with an incarcerated parent find support, comfort and reduced levels of anxiety and sadness, as well as provides parents and care-givers with strategies, tips, and age-appropriate language they can use to help communicate with their children about incarceration.

The Little Children, Big Challenges initiative, which includes efforts to address the loss of a parent, divorce, incarceration and other difficult situations young children face, grew out of Sesame Workshop’s Military Families initiative.

To learn more about why children with incarcerated parents are in need of support, Sesame Workshop sat down with Carol F. Burton, executive director of Centerforce, a non-profit dedicated to supporting individuals and families impacted by incarceration. Ms. Burton also served as an advisor to Sesame Workshop during the development of the Little Children, Big Challenges: Incarceration initiative. Read More